Should You be Looking at Home Water Filtration Systems?

Reports of door-to-door salespeople pushing home water filtration systems with exaggerated reports of contaminated water can lead some to believe all this water filtration talk is marketing hype. Unfortunately, the truth is the water supply in many areas really isn’t particularly clean. Here are some ways to tell if yours could use some improvement.

Your water tests positive for contaminants

The most accurate way to find out about impurities in your water is to either request a copy your water company’s water quality report or test it yourself with a kit from your local health department.

Your water smells

Does your tap water smell so strongly of chlorine or sulfur you couldn’t imagine drinking it? Chlorine kills harmful microbes in water, but it’s also been linked to heart disease and birth defects. A sulfur smell may be from the rock walls of your well or a bacteria problem. Either way, there are home water filtration systems that can greatly improve the situation.

Your hair and skin feel dry

If you’ve never bathed in pure, soft water you’ll be surprised at what a difference in can make in how your skin and hair look and feel. Although not all home water filtration systems can change the water’s pH level, most can take out the chlorine and other contaminants that cause dry skin or swimming-pool-scented hair.

You laundry doesn’t get clean

Laundry washed in impure water may come back with brown or green stains, a dull yellowish tone, or even an unpleasant smell. Whole-house, also known as in-line, water filtration systems can take care of this problem.

You don’t have to put up with smelly, chlorine-flavored water that stains your clothes and dries out your hair. Even with a budget of just $100 you can pick up one of the best home water filtration systems from a top-rated company like Aquasana.

The Disadvantages Of Reverse Osmosis Home Water Filters

Reverse osmosis water filters were the only method that was once available to provide purified water to your home. Better, more cost effective and efficient systems have since been introduced, and yet water companies still push the old system over the newer technology. There are many disadvantages to reverse osmosis systems, as we highlight below.

Still Being Sold

There are many people that are still led to believe by those selling them that the best way to filter water coming into your home is with a reverse osmosis filter system.

These systems are disproportionately expensive, starting in the region of $10,000 to supply and fit, let alone the annual running and maintenance costs. When there are systems a tenth of the price that will do a better job and have vastly reduced maintenance costs, how are people still persuaded to buy them? The answer lies in the big marketing bucks available to push this outdated product. These units cost a lot to purchase and install, making profits to large water companies lending their weight to them great; well worth their outlay financially to market hard.

Waste

It is not easy for any salesman to hide the fact that gallon upon gallon of water using reverse osmosis is wasted, in order to produce just a few gallons suitable to drink.

Many using a septic system for their waste water have to upgrade to larger sizes because the tank couldn’t cope with the amount of waste-water it was accumulating. For example, between 40 to 90 gallons of waste-water is produced in order to give the householder just 5 gallons of purified drinking water. This is an unnecessary and flagrant waste of a precious commodity.

Power

These systems take power to run, and given the waste water to drinkable water ratio, it is clear that they will be using electricity at a high rate. Not ideal given the increasing price of electricity, along with the higher impact on the environment.

Is Water Safer To Drink When You Use A Reverse Osmosis System

The most important question that you should be asking when considering purchasing any water filtration system, especially when buying one that is costly and expensive to install.

There is certainly no doubt that such systems will make the water safer for one to drink than if you were to leave it untreated, but the simple answer to the question posed above is no.

This is because one of the major disadvantages of reverse osmosis systems is that it does not eradicate all the cysts or chemical contaminants that are found in water.

One manufacturer has freely admitted as much with a proviso that these kinds of units are only designed to clean up the water’s aesthetic properties. They don’t actually act as a way of preventing waterborne toxic and microbiological chemicals from getting into the supply.

One other disadvantage of reverse osmosis filters is that they can remove all the natural minerals which are good for us from the water. If giving your family fresh, clean, pollutant free water as efficiently and cost effectively as possible is your aim, then you would do well to look elsewhere.

About the author: Tyler Waterman is a health enthusiast and chief writer for http://SafeClearWater.com.

Home Water Purifiers and Filters – Investment In Your Health

If you are one of the many people who worry about the safety of their drinking water, you are not alone. Many American’s are quickly growing fond of home water purifiers and filters to help put their minds to ease and to give their wallets a rest.

The simple fact about the safety of American water is that we are largely blind to any water-borne hazardous substances that may be in it. Most of us don’t know how our local water plants are treating the water, what filtration systems they are using, or how well they are even doing their job. Nor we do know that the water is not getting polluted on the way to our homes through faulty pipes or other factors that no one can control.

This is part of the reason that home water purification systems are increasing in popularity. People desperately want to know the water their families live in is safe and not full of hazardous chemicals and toxins.

The move is a win-win situation and that is another reason that these devices are becoming so popular. You can easily gain so much just by implementing a simple appliance in your home or onto individual faucet fixtures in your home. The gains are tremendous when you break it all down.

• Live in clean, safe, healthy water that is chemical and toxin free
• Get peace of mind knowing you are safe from all of the uncontrollable factors that can make your water unhealthy and potentially deadly.
• Save bundles of money no longer buying bottled water. Potentially save $2,500 a year assuming you buy bottled water every week like many Americans do.

Due to the increased popularity home water purifiers and filters have grown in variety in the past few years to include many new kinds of devices. There are expensive reverse osmosis systems which actually over purify water removing healthy minerals. In the middle of the spectrum there are more affordable and ironically more effective systems you can implement.

Some of these less expensive devices are fixtures that can easily be placed onto your existing faucets to directly filter the water, without losing the beneficial minerals your body needs. These are substantially less costly than expensive reverse osmosis systems and easier to install.

As an example, one option is to simply apply a small shower filtration system directly on your shower head and it cleans the water as it is coming through the tap. This is a remarkably simple and easy solution.

Hopefully you can see the many benefits to using home water purifiers and filters. The improved taste and comfort when using these affordable and easy to implement devices is worth the investment. Now you can take control of the safety of your tap water and reap the benefits.

Water Purification Devices – Safe Water Today

The water purification devices used by large scale treatment facilities cannot protect the health of the average individual. A point-of-use or in home water purification device is an absolute necessity.

Unless your water comes from a pure mountain spring that has been tested for contamination, then you need additional protection from pesticides, herbicides, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, heavy metals, bacterial cysts resistant to disinfection, traces of drugs, hormones and thousands of cancer causing chemicals that are present in groundwater and other freshwater sources all over the world.

You might think that buying bottled waters is the best choice. But companies are not required to use water purification devices. They are not required to test for contaminants, unless they ship across state lines.

Environmentalists hate the multi-billion dollar bottling industry, primarily because of the natural resources used to create the bottles and transport them to stores and families. From an economic standpoint, a home water purification device takes much less money out of the family’s budget.

For example, the annual cost for a family of four that has in-home water purification devices is less than $100. Families that have home delivery of the big multi-gallon jugs spend over $900 per year. If you buy it from a store, you spend about $1800 per year. What could you do with an extra $150 per month?

With the first $150, you might want to buy a water purification device for the showerheads in your home, particularly if you and the kids like to swim.

You see disinfection byproducts called THMs are present in practically every home in the country. The primary source is showering in chlorinated waters.

THMs are carcinogenic. In other words, they cause cancer. The EPA and other health authorities believe that the cancer risk is “acceptable”. But, recent research has shown that the risk to people who also swim in chlorinated pools is “unacceptable”.

Pregnant women should avoid exposure whenever possible, because the contaminants increase the risk of miscarriage and birth defects. Researchers are only just learning about the many health risks that are caused by the thousands of chemicals that we are exposed to every day. The biggest risks are to our children.

It is unknown what the regular daily exposure to the traces of drugs, hormones and the combination of chemicals found in tap-water could do to future generations. If you want to protect your kids and your own future health, you need water purification devices and you should avoid other types of exposure whenever possible.

Check your health and beauty aids for chemical ingredients. Stop using anti-bacterial hand lotions. Soap and purified water is just as good. Eat organic foods whenever possible and leave your water purification device in the “on” position when washing fruits and vegetables, as well as for cooking.

Avoid drinking out of plastic containers. Avoid eating fish that is high up on the food chain, because the mercury levels they contain are higher. Choose water purification devices that combine ion exchange to remove lead and copper, with carbon and multi media filtration to remove drugs and chemical contaminants and submicron filtration to remove parasitic cysts.

In other words, protect yourself wherever you can.